At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year, there seemed to be an explosion of I’d guess it will be like a game of musical chairs, with only a few lasting after the music stops, much like the explosion of tablets at the show a few years ago.
One I’m sure will last is the Martian Passport series, which they promote as “The World’s First Voice Command Smartwatch.”
This is a rare time that I did have to read the instructions, but they were clear and easy to follow; press this button, then that button, etc.
They do have an interesting item in the instruction book about how the average person checks their phone 150 times a day. I think that number is grossly understated, but I’m sure many of those 150 are to check the time for those with a watchless wrist.
Once you’re set up and make a Bluetooth connection with your smartphone, you get notifications of callers, email, social media, texts, calendar alerts and event-activated Siri on an iPhone.
You can respond with the watch and talk into it like you’re a secret agent or just use it as an alert to either take out your smartphone or ignore it.
If the contact information for the caller is in your phone, you’ll see that name on the watch display. If you don’t have the name entered you’ll see the phone number.
All the other information you are being alerted to is shown on the display running across the bottom of the front of the watch (96- by 16-pixel graphic OLED display).
The Martian watch also can be set to trigger your phone’s camera so you can get in the photo.
Once your watch is paired with a phone it will vibrate when you they get out of range of each other (Bluetooth range is about 30 feet), letting you know you left the phone behind.
An internal battery needs to be charged for 2 hours every few days via USB, depending on the amount of use.
I have to admit, it does take a little getting used to having your wrist vibrating for a phone call or message alert. While eating lunch with friends last week, my wrist starting vibrating and I said just that, which caused some odd looks from my comrades.
In addition to the smartphone capabilities, this is one good looking watch for keeping up with that old fashion thing of just checking the time.
Details: $299 in color combinations of black, white and silver; www.martianwatches.com
Eye-Fi Mobi
I’ve been familiar with the Eye-Fi SD media cards for years and had great success with them going from a camera to a computer, but a direct connection to my iPad has been cumbersome and involved third party apps, which never seem to work flawlessly.
All that came to an end past week when I tried the Eye-Fi Mobi WiFi Camera to Phone 8GB, SDHC Class 10 memory card along with the Eye-Fi app (free for iOS, Android and Kindle Fire).
The setup is simple and it worked from the start; just download the app and enter the provided activation code.
Inside the memory card is Wi-Fi, letting you make a direct connection from the memory card to your device, so this system works without an Internet connection.
Assuming you put the memory card in an Eye-Fi compatible camera you’re all set to start taking photos.
Images are captured on the memory card along with automatically downloading into my iOS (iPhone 5s) image library, where they can be sent to social media when you switch over to an Internet connection.
Since the images are still stored on the card you will be able to download them for archiving on your computer.
This system enables you to use a real camera for optimum image quality vs. using a cellphone, which provides instant access for social media but will not be the best quality for long term use for large prints, etc.
I tested it with large JPGs on a high-end digital SLR and a point-n-shoot camera and found both to work great for photos and video.
There’s not a lot to it, which makes for the perfect accessory.
The Eye-Fi Pro X2 16GB memory card has faster speeds designed for capturing HD video.
Details: $49.99 8GB, $79.99 16GB $99.99 32GB; www.eye.fi
Portable battery pack
Paick’s new portable battery called the Noble is only a half-inch thick but has a big time 6000mAh Li-ion battery of power inside.
The company has designed the pocket-sized battery with fashion in mind, featuring an aluminum alloy high-performance case.
A dust-proof pop-up slot opens to display two USB and one microUSB ports for charging.
The iPhone 5 series can get up to three charges before the battery needs a charge; other smartphones can get two charges and an iPad once.
Details: $64.99, but a promotion has it at $49.99 through March 20; www.paick.com
